“I’ve soon been writing this blog for about a year. I still have no idea how many people actually read it. I have even less of an idea of how many people read and enjoy it. I think the style might have changed a bit from my first to my last post – I think I might have become better at mixing the boring text with exiting photos of me and the people I have been hiking with doing the haka. I don’t really know. I haven’t yet gone back and read what I wrote earlier. However, I guess it might be nice to have the possibility later on to go back to my blog and read what I actually experienced in New Zealand. I would assume it has been a good time – but I guess I will have no idea until I read the blog again.

I always wanted to be able to write short blog messages. I think people are “

Yup, I actually stopped in the middle of a sentence. Now you (and more importantly I) will never know what I think people are. Such a shame!

Anyway… the reason I’m writing this post is to assure you that I’m not entirely done with my blog, even though I have now left New Zealand and returned to Denmark. At least I still have some photos to put up and present (although most of them can already be seen on Facebook or Flickr). Right now I’m working on finishing my project, though. Since it usually takes me a while to sit down and write an actual blog post, that will have to wait. I can give a very short summary of what has happened since my last post, and then I might later return with some photos to show for it:

- Birthday celebrations (including my own Birthday, a bit surprising as I was born in October).
- Leaving NZ, going to the US.
- Buying an iPad (and how it nearly cost me my camera).
- My sister’s wedding (hooray!).
- Me, running around as a french fry (yup, that’s what that sentence is meant to say).
- Mixed randomness about America (and mostly the food habits) such as my amazement of Blue Cow Frozen Yogurt and my continued appreciation of the fact that The Cheesecake Factory exists.
- The final part of my project.

Aren’t you excited now? This post has certainly earned the tag Bad teaser.

What I study
It seems like a good idea to start from scratch, so that’s what I’ll do, even though I would assume that most people who have somehow ended up at this site already have a vague idea about what it is I study. I am currently trying hard to finish my master’s degree at The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), called MMC Master, an acronym for Mathematical Modelling and Computation Master. The name reveals a good deal about what most of my courses are about: Formulating mathematical models and using them to compute exciting numbers. A mathematical model is not some geeky guy or girl going on catwalks. Neither is it a bunch of clay shaped into numbers, symbols or multiplication signs. They can, however, be (partly) responsible for the bad sense of humor demonstrated in the last two sentences as I have spent almost five years studying them by now. No, mathematical models are a series of formulas set up to represent some kind of real life problem. When all of Europe (and especially the UK) got yet another reason for hating Iceland, this time due to the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull which prevented almost every airplane around Europe from flying, mathematical models were used to estimate the risks of flying through the ash spewed up by the volcano. Likewise, models were created to compute how long the eruption would last and the probabilities that other, larger volcanos in the area, would erupt.

The type of mathematical models I usually deal with are of a bit different kind, however. During my studies, I have chosen to focus on Operations Research (OR). OR uses a combination of statistics, mathematical modeling and mathematical optimization to calculate optimal or near-optimal solutions or proposals to solutions for different decision-making problems. It is heavily used to create production plans and work schedules while it also plays an essential role in route planning and almost any logistic problem you can come up with.

What my thesis is about
My thesis deals with what has been named The Container Positioning Problem. I am writing it with my study buddy, Skott, who was also in Auckland last semester, taking the exact same courses as me. Skott’s description of the project can be read on his blog- it is all in Danish, though, since he’s too lazy to translate it into English. Either that, or he is clever enough to know that it is a waste of time to do the translation since nobody would want to read these kinds of blogs anyway, except for a few family members, perhaps. Many of the people I meet down here seem to be surprised that we are working two people on the same project. I am glad that we do have that opportunity at my university as I’m sure the final result will be more than the sum of its parts. It is extremely helpful to have someone to discuss with on a daily basis about the progress of the thesis, without having to schedule meetings with supervisors who (understandably) don’t know all the exact details of what we have been doing with the project since the last meeting. We have two supervisors, one in Denmark and one in New Zealand who have both been quite unavailable for long periods of time. In those situations it has been even more helpful to be two people on the same project.

The project is about something as exciting as moving containers. When a container ship arrives at a harbor, the containers it brings with it are often paced in a terminal where they will be located for storage for a while, until they need to depart again, either via trucks further into the country, or continue with another ship. In the meantime (between arrival and departure of the containers) it is important to have a plan for how the containers should be moved around at the terminal: A container which is about to leave must not be buried underneath a lot of other containers since the crane can only pick up the ones placed at the top of a stack. It is important to spend as little time as possible to move the containers around; the cranes are expensive to use, especially if they have to be controlled manually, which is still the case at many terminals.

Containers at Auckland Harbor – can you imagine anything more exciting?

The last couple of years research has been done to try to solve the problem using OR methods. In 2008, Louise K. Sibbesen, a Danish Ph.D. student from DTU, wrote her doctoral thesis about the problem. Her approach was to use a so-called metaheuristic, a method in mathematical optimization which often results in “good” solutions without guaranteeing that the found solutions are also optimal. It is often acceptable to find just “good” solutions (measured in e.g. profit) to many of the problems which occur in real life. These solutions can still easily be better than what a human being would be able to find manually. Even if the solution is “only” on par with the ones that can be found manually there is often a certain value in having a computer program being able to compute these solutions automatically. Often it can be done much faster and the labor cost can be saved. In my bachelor thesis I (and two other people) developed a heuristic to help plan which teachers should be assigned which class to teach during a school year in the high schools around Denmark. Already before the thesis had been handed in, the heuristic had been implemented in the commercial product Lectio, used by the majority of Danish high schools. Later we were awarded the prize for best bachelor thesis at DTU by McKinsey & Co as I also mentioned on this blog last semester.

Optimal solutions are of course always attractive. Therefore, a student from The University of Auckland, Antony Phillips, decided last semester to look at the problem once again but from a different point of view. He wanted to prove that there was another approach to solving the problem which, possibly, could lead to optimal solutions in the future, without using heuristics. Using heuristics is in some circles seen as “cheating” since they don’t necessarily lead to pure, perfect solutions. He wrote about the subject in his Fourth Year Project which is kind of similar to a Danish bachelor thesis. Here he found a number of different mistakes and deficiencies in the original doctoral thesis by Sibbesen.

Skott and I are now trying to carry on the torch with our project. Our goal is to get closer to be able to solve real life sized problems to optimality. We spent the first month on going through the two previous theses about the subject and did find some more mistakes and deficiencies we found it necessary to take into consideration in the mathematical model. The ideal for a mathematical model for problems such as the one we are dealing with, is for it to follow a specific structure which makes the problem linear. Basically this means that there exist certain rules for how the mathematical formulas describing the problem can be set up. The special thing about linear programming (LP), as it is called if the formulation follows this structure, is that there exists certain solution methods (The Simplex method), which can be exploited. These are methods which run extremely fast and have been perfected through many years. Therefore it pays off to comply with these restrictions, even though it also means that a certain amount of thought is required to formulate these models. A mathematical model which describes an LP problem consists of two parts: An objective function plus a number of constraints. The objective function describes the goal for the optimization, which in our case is to minimize the use of the crane at the terminal. The constraints define what is meant by a feasible solution. For instance, our mathematical model contains constraints such as “a container can only be picked up if it is on top of a stack”, “a container needs to be at either exactly one position or be moving at any given time” and “a container needs to arrive to/depart from the terminal at the times specified by the given data”.

After we had spent some time looking into the previous theses we created our own model which corrected the mistakes we found in the original ones. At the same time the model is now more realistic since it captures more details of the problem as it exists in real life. For example the model now constraints how fast the crane can move, not only when it carries a container (which was the case in the original models) but also when it doesn’t carry anything at all. We have also implemented a solution technique which uses a “rolling time window”. Instead of trying to take all containers into consideration which might arrive or depart within the planning horizon, we cut down the focus to be a subset of the full period. In container shipping there often exists great uncertainty about the precise arrival and departure times for the containers. Often precise information doesn’t arrive until fairly close to the actual arrival or departure of the containers themselves. Therefore it doesn’t make sense to make big, detailed plans for every single container since there might very well arrive new information later which can completely ruin the meticulously laid plan. What we do instead is to focus on containers which are about to depart or arrive in a given period. The placement of a container which doesn’t depart until much later is fairly irrelevant as long as it doesn’t create conflicts with a container that is actually about to depart which need to get to the top of a stack so the crane can pick them up. The solution technique we use thereby focuses on the containers which are about to depart within a foreseeable future (a day or two). It is a continuously running solution process which moves the time window focused on as time goes by. Not only does this solution technique represent the reality much better than an assumption about all information being known from the very beginning; working with smaller time periods also makes the problem significantly easier to solve, resulting in faster solution times.

With this method (and a number of other clever techniques) we have accomplished some pretty good results so far. A problem which took 3000 seconds to solve previously, after Philips’ modifications to the original model, now takes about 50 seconds to solve. That is a fairly good improvement. Our program cannot yet solve problems so big that they could represent real life cases, though. Especially Skott has also spent a good deal of time on implementing a Graphical User Interface (GUI) from which I have included a couple of screenshots below.

Our program can be used to create random data sets.

The solution process.

A Gantt-diagram which shows the solution computed by our program.

3D visualization of the solution.

Example of a container being moved.

And that is pretty much our project. We are supposed to hand it in in the beginning of August and present it a couple of weeks after. We will be using the last available time to test our program, discuss the results and make some conclusions on our formidable work.

What these headlines are doing in this blog post
Pass… Maybe it is a weak attempt to make this text, full of technical terms and container talk, seem more clear and less boring. I think I failed (but at least the container pictures are colorful).



Wooh! It is time to actually (almost) catch up with the present on this blog after having been several weeks behind. Yay! And so much enthusiasm as well! Three exclamation marks in just two lines – and here is another one: !

This semester I have really wanted to go on some hikes but due to several different circumstances (waiting for other people to have the time and the car to be willing to drive) it didn’t happen until a couple of weeks ago. The trip went to Taranaki which had also been the plan a couple of weeks earlier. We were seven people who went in two groups: Skott, Tor and I (the Scandinavians) in one group and Ilana, Jeremy, Mickey and Max (Americans + a Frenchman) in the other. We, in the first group, left fairly early in the morning (especially considering it was a Saturday) while the other group followed some hours later since Max had to teach some tennis lessons before he could go. We were going on a two days’ hike where the first day was fairly short (about 4 hours according to Department of Conservation) while the next day was supposed to be much longer (7-10 hours). The plan was for the two groups to meet in the hut after the first day’s short hike. The first group had to buy and bring the food for the rest to minimize the risk that the second group had to walk too far in the dark.

Mount Tarankai/Egmont is fairly easy to locate on a map due of its very iconic cone shape, as I also mentioned in my last blog post. Unfortunately it was too late in the season to actually climb all the way to the top of the mountain without having to use ice axes and cramp-ons. It would be possible to rent them but you would have to prove that you actually knew how to use the equipment – such an unreasonable requirement. The hike we went on was therefore not straight up the mountain – we did have it in background for most of the hike, providing a pleasant scenery. I had been a bit nervous that the hike might be a bit boring with just an even-leveled path since we weren’t going up the mountain. Luckily I had no reason for such fears. It was actually a quite interesting hike; some places it was hard to see that it was actually a proper path since rocks were lying everywhere. When we realized that the other group was so delayed that they would have to do the entire first day’s hike in the dark, I called them and warned them not to do it. It didn’t really seem like a very good idea to climb around on those rocks in the dark with a scary chasm at one of the sides. We had enough trouble just crossing in daylight. They didn’t really seem to listen to me, though.

It has become a tradition to start our hikes with a haka

A small example of some of the rock slides we had to cross the first day.

Tor, scouting for the path.

We arrived at the hut exactly as it got dark which was pretty lucky since none of us had brought flashlights. We spent a good deal of time trying to light a fire which proved to be quite difficult since none of us had thought about bringing matches or a lighter either (I guess we weren’t really well-prepared). However, since we were three engineers we figured that we should be able to create fire somehow. Immediately Skott started trying the well-known “wood-against-wood-makes-fire” trick. Since the hut was lit by light bulbs powered by solar collectors we also considered the possibility of short-circuiting one of them, giving rise to a useful spark. We spent some time considering different options until I in the end chose to take the lighter hanging on the notice board and suggesting we could maybe use that.

Skott, trying to create fire.

When it was about 9pm we figured it was time to go to bed. At this point we had realized that the others had probably chosen to listen to my warnings and skipped the hike. They arrived at 10pm after having spent five hours on the same trip we spent two and a half to do.

The second day was very nice with a view of the mountain most of the day. About halfway through the hike, which ended up taking about eight hours, the nature of the path changed dramatically. While the first part had consisted of either stairs or level ground, the second half offered almost vertical drops which made for some quite interesting climbs. There were also a couple of rivers we had to cross by walking around on slippery rocks. During the last half hour I managed to throw away my lens cap for my camera and twist my ankle (as I had predicted I would do in the beginning of the day – I love my ankles) – these were two separate occurrences. Just as we were done with the hike it started to rain. It kept raining for the six hours it took to drive back to Auckland. Such a nice end.

We tried to introduce the other group for the idea about starting the day with a haka. Max (and to some degree Ilana) obviously didn’t manage to grasp the concept.

Mount Taranaki with Max, Skott and Tor posing in front of it.

As I mentioned, some places the path just went straight down. Luckily, ladders were placed at the worst parts

The path was sometimes quite hard to find. The sparse markings with signs did however help us find our way.

The suspension bridge where I chose to throw my lens cap away.

The following Monday I went to Wagamama’s for the first time for the dinner which is held for the PSV residents once every semester. It was a very chaotic and messy dinner. We were split up at three long tables and the dishes arrived in an order which appeared to be fairly random to me. A lot of people got their main before the starter and long before a lot of other people at the table had received any food at all. We quickly found out that you just had to eat whatever you were served when it was served since you had no idea when anything else would arrive for either you or the others sitting around you, staring hungrily and jealously at your food. I think our table got the desserts before those sitting at the last table got their starters. The serving of the dessert was also disappointing. Many (including me) had ordered cheesecake which the waiter didn’t have any problems with. When the others around me started getting their desserts and I could see I wasn’t about to have any, I asked the waiter where my cheesecake was. Apparently they never had it. One of the alternatives, a chocolate cake with ice cream, they only had five pieces of. Not too organized when you know a big group is coming. The food was fine, though.

Tuesday I went (alone) to the cinema to see Kick-Ass which I am really happy I did. It is an amazing movie about a relatively geeky guy who wonders why nobody has tried to become a superhero in real life. After this realization he naturally decides to try it out himself. The movie develops into something completely different by the end – almost as if it is three different movies of different genres, each extremely entertaining. The end of the movie contains action sequences which reminded me of some of Tarantino’s amazing movies which is probably one of the strongest recommendations I can give.

Thursday I had been invited for dinner at Jocelyn’s, one of the two Frenchmen who I went to Samoa with. crêpes were served and wine was drunk in a truly French manner. It was a very enjoyable evening.

Sunday I got up at 7 to watch the Eurovision with Tor. Unfortunately we missed about 10 songs in the middle of the show because the stream died. We did get to see the random stuntman running onto the stage during Spain’s performance (I thought he was part of the show until the hosts pointed out that Spain of course would get to sing again since their song had been ruined), Moldova’s amazing attempt to one-up last years winner by not only having a fiddle, but a glowing one (with a lot of other craziness added). We also got to see Germany’s winning song and Denmark’s performance. I was very happy when Denmark received top points from the first two countries after which Lena from Germany started getting all the points which in the end resulted in her winning. Tor was happy that Norway managed to (only just) beat Moldova and I was amused about the fact that the UK, which is secured a spot in the final each year since they put so much money into the Eurovision, ended dead last with only 10 points (Denmark had 12 points after the very first of 39 countries had given their votes). Tor and I agreed that we were content with Lena winning, though, since that resulted in a memorable interview with an extremely nervous 19 year old girl who didn’t look comfortable on the stage at all. It didn’t help that she had to be interviewed in English which was obviously not her language of preference. Classic moments such as a very cautious “Hiiiii” as answer to a number of questions she did not understand or “I… I don’t think I am strong enough… to carry this… the whole time” about the trophy she had just been handed immediately appear in my head. The same does the image of the poor German girl who tries to hide by wrapping her head in the German flag when the whole situation becomes too much for her and at last her surprised expression when she realize she has to sing again (“Do I have to sing… NOW?”). Luckily the stream continued for a bit after her song was over: They just let her stay on the stage without anyone helping her. She had no idea what to do or say and in the end she had to switch to German in order to at least manage to mumble something remotely coherent until they unfortunately turned off the stream.

Later that day Ilana, Max and I went on a small trip to Rangitoto Island, a small volcanic island close to Auckland. It was a nice little walk up and down the volcano. We had a very nice view of Auckland from the top. The weather was perfect with the sun shining from a cloudless sky. I am still amazed that it is possible to have such beautiful weather, now that we have officially entered winter here in New Zealand. I don’t get where the annoying, bitter cold, the persistent darkness and the horrible snow, that completely ruins your chances of going anywhere without getting your feet wet, have gone. It is definitely not winter, as I know it, and I am quite happy about that.

View from Rangitoto. Auckland is the city in the world with most boats per capita.

As I also mentioned last time I have been quite bad at writing blog posts this semester (thereby not implying I was doing a good job of it last semester either). Hopefully I will manage to write at least a couple more before I leave New Zealand. However, it has started to dawn upon me that I will have to leave soon. Students all around me are busy with exams which is usually a sign that the semester is about to end. At the same time a lot of people have started talking about leaving resulting in the mandatory invitations for goodbye parties. Indeed, some people have already left which of course is very sad. Unfortunately that is how it always goes with these studies abroad, as I have now started to get so accustomed to.

Coming up: A post about what it is I spend my normal weekdays on down here!

But we start at the wine tasting which at this point took place more than a month ago; proof that I have been horrible at producing these amazing blog posts people have become so used to. On the other hand, there is always guarantee for quality, fun and clever remarks. The first weekend in May was the one I spent so much time on last time: The one with air guitar, kiwi fruits and quidditch. A quick side note about quidditch: I will probably not get to see it in NZ. The people who arrange the tournament have chosen to place the matches at a school a bit away from here. I think it might look a bit suspicious if I showed up at a school, in the middle of a weekend, to watch a bunch of kids playing quidditch. But back to the wine tasting: Kirsty, Ilana (again, people from Flat 15), Max (French guy who at this point is as big a part of Flat 15 as I am, without any of us actually living there) and I chose to complete an amazing weekend by going to Waiheke Island on a sunny Sunday. Waiheke Island is located about 30 minutes by ferry from Downtown Auckland. It is (by my personal experience) a sunny island, filled with fantastic beaches and a very laid back atmosphere. The island is well-known for its plentiful wine production and is a popular place for people to go visit and taste the different wines each vineyard has to offer. It was a very enjoyable way to end the weekend. We went to three different vineyards which all had different approaches to how they presented the wines. At Stonyridge Vineyard we bought two glasses of wine to share among the four of us. We enjoyed these wines while sitting outside, enjoying the sun and the green fields surrounding us.

Stonyridge Vineyard – it was here we found our favorite wine on the trip, Luna Negra.

As the the true Frenchman, Max is, he felt a sudden surge of inspiration with the first taste of proper wine. Here he is in the midst of writing lyrics for his song.

From Stonyridge Vineyard we continued to Te Whau where we got to taste the same wine from different years. Here they did do a better job of actually presenting the wines. The wine reminded Max of his home region, Bordeaux, to such an extent that he had to invest in two bottles of wine.

People sitting, enjoying their wines at Te Whau.

The final stop of the day was Mudbrick Vineyard, one of the most popular vineyards at Waiheke. Here the presentations of the wines were a bit more like we had expected before the trip, with six different wines in six minutes, with a brief description of each attached. We got the abridged version of the wine tasting since a wedding reception was about to take place. That someone would choose a place like that to host their wedding did make a lot of sense – the surroundings were amazing.

Bride and groom arrive at the wedding reception at Mudbrick Vineyard.

The plan for the following weekend was to go to Taranaki to do the first hike of the semester. Taranaki is an area 5-6 hours drive Southwest of Auckland. The destination was Mount Taranaki/Egmont, a very iconic volcano which is easy to spot when looking at a map of New Zealand since it is almost perfectly shaped like a cone, meaning it appears as a clear circle (or, to be correct, a disk since a circle technically only refers to the circumference of the complete area) on the map. The plan was that Ilana, Mickey (Ilana’s friend), Tor (Norwegian whom I know from last semester and sometimes play squash against) and I had planned to leave early Saturday morning in order to go on a two day hike near the volcano and still be able to be back before the weekend was over. The trip never took place, though since the dear Subaru Legacy, which has been acting so loyal ever since Skott and I bought it last semester, chose to simply stop after having driven a couple of hundred meters. It happened in the middle of The Domain, the park Parnell Student Village is placed right next to. After having tried to start the car for a couple if hours (which among other things involved asking random runners for help with pushing the car) we had to cancel the trip. In the end the battery in the car had been so drained that not even the hazard lights functioned anymore. I had to pay 80 NZD to get the car towed back the 500-800 meters we had managed to push it through the park. The membership Skott and I bought from AA (Automobile Association) was only in his name which meant he had to be present if we were going get anything out of it. Skott and I met at my place the following Monday to get the car repaired somehow. Before we tried anything else, Skott wanted to try one last time to start the car. None of us were very hopeful, though, as it is seldom very easy to start a car with a dead battery. It worked, though. We drove it to a repair shop where we were told they couldn’t really find the problem until the car wouldn’t start again. Since then, the car has been working fine.

That week in general was pretty eventful with plans for every day. Tuesday meant yet another of my weekly salsa lessons. I still don’t really know why I did take those lessons but I did manage to survive the eight lessons I payed for (although I only showed up for six of them). After Salsa, I went to see Iron Man 2 with Skott and Vegard. I have almost completely neglected going to the cinema this semester which is stupid of me since the tickets here are extremely cheap (10 NZD) compared to what I would have to pay in Denmark. I must try to correct that mistake during my last month in the country. I feel like using the good old cliché “OK, without being anything special” to describe the movie (at least, something similar is a quite well-known phrase used over and over for movie and video game reviews in Denmark). However, that does not really say anything about it. I remember the first movie to be much better and more entertaining, resulting in a slight disappointment about the sequel; a bit too much empty-headed action and a completely irrelevant side story only used to try to setup the upcoming Avengers movie which I do look forward to, mostly because Josh Wedon has been chosen as the director. Vegard complained that the movie was too unrealistic – I’m not quite sure what he had expected when he walked in to see a superhero movie.

Wednesday I participated in a sports tournament (interres) for the second week in a row. This tournament has taken place during most of the semester and requires the different student housings to compete against each other in different kinds of sports. I represented PSV for two weeks by playing handball for them. It was very interesting since nobody down here really knows about the fantastic (Danish) invention, handball is. Those who have been following my blog ridiculously closely might remember that I in the beginning of the semester signed of for “Beginner’s handball”. Contrary to the salsa lessons I only showed up for the very first handball lesson where I realized it was a bit too much “beginner’s” for my taste. I was offered to play matches for their “Advanced” team. Unfortunately I never did pull myself together to contact the relevant person about it. I also think their matches were placed at bad times, though. The interres tournament was a good opportunity for me to get to play a bit of handball again. It was very entertaining to see people’s take on the sport. Naturally it ended up looking more like basketball than normal, European handball. Most people seemed to enjoy it, though, which I guess is the most important part.

Thursday we went to see a comedy show. It was the last week of the three week’s comedy festival so it was one of the last chances we had to get to see one of the many comedians who performed during those weeks. The biggest difficulty was deciding on a show since there were so many to choose between. They all had descriptions which basically stated that the show was funny and since we didn’t know any kiwi comedians it was very hard to tell which shows would be good and which would be bad. Kirsty and I spent a whole evening cutting down the big list of candidates to just one person. The process of elimination included removal due to unforgivable traits such as “being British” (Kirsty’s request), “being a woman”, “having a bad description of the show” or “appear so far down the list of candidates that we cannot possibly include anymore for the next round”. Of course the process did not stop here. Thorough YouTube research was applied along with the creation of a complex point system based on e.g. show length, price and extra features such as being able to sit around tables. We ended up being a group of eight who went to see Brendan Lovegrove who is apparently a fairly well-known Kiwi comedian. He had a couple of jokes which were quite funny but in general it was a bit disappointing. His show seemed to aim at the lowest common denominator (intelligence wise). Most of the jokes had some vaguely racist tendencies or included silly masturbation gesticulations. Our group had been spread around most of the room since we were told to fill up all the tables in front. They didn’t want empty spaces since the show was being recorded. Even though we had been spread out like that, Brendan still managed to pick out almost every single member of the group. He kept returning to me which wasn’t really that surprising since I had managed to place myself on the first row, directly in front of him. Unfortunately the man seemed to be too unintelligent to be able to come of with any kind of relevant jokes concerning me (that should be quite easy, I would say). He did keep returning to the subject of Denmark, clearly not knowing the slightest thing about it. At least I wasn’t accused of being in a boy band which has happened twice before (out of three times) when I have gone to see standup in Denmark. I guess that is progress.

Friday it was time to celebrate Esther (another Flat 15 member) in occasion of her birthday. This was done with dinner at an Indian restaurant followed by a variety of cakes back in Flat 15. I have become pretty used to going there for cake or other baked goods.

Saturday we went to see rugby. Auckland Blues against Hamilton Chiefs. Going to a rugby match was still left on my list of things I needed to do before I leave New Zealand. It was fairly entertaining (the home team, Blues won) and it was nice having Max by my side so he could explain the rules as the game was progressing. I don’t think it is a sport I will ever really get. There are too many breaks and far too many situations with men who throw themselves into a big pile to hug each other.

I feel this situation is very typical for rugby: A lot of men hugging each other.

At times the rugby players also share their love with different objects. Here they are cuddling with a pole.

Throw-ins in rugby are quite interesting. They are not only throwing the ball but also each other.

I am still a couple of weeks behind in telling about what I’m doing in New Zealand. I also need to post something about my thesis. But that will be another time since I have already spent far too much space writing about (for the common reader) fairly irrelevant events. I’m not certain this sudden end qualifies the post for the famous “anti-climatic endings”. But it is my blog, and I decide, so of course this is another post with that tag attached to it.

I spend most of my weekdays on the project Skott and I work on from 9 to 5 every day. The weekends I try to do as much as I can to enjoy my spare time which I have definitely succeeded in doing.

Sunday three weeks ago it was Anzac Day. This day is used as a remembrance day for the people who died and served during military operations for New Zealand. The day is a national holiday which made most of the shops close. It was funny to see how people went berserk in the local supermarket, Foodtown, just because they wouldn’t be able to buy groceries for one day – a Sunday, even. It was like seeing people trying to stock up on yeast during a strike in Denmark!

The day itself was celebrated with ceremonies and parades. By Auckland Museum, which is about two minutes from PSV where I live, there was a ceremony at dawn and one a bit later in the morning. I did not manage to get up in time for the first one (six o’clock a Sunday morning did seem a bit unrealistic) but I did go to the ceremony at 11 o’clock.

Auckland Museum is always lit in some color during the night. On the occasion of Anzac Day the light was red.

The museum was used as a screen for movie clips from old wars. Apparently they had been edited by Peter Jackson. It did not make them that much more interesting, though.

Parade before the ceremony.

I was so happy when I saw these uniformed men stare into this monument during the entire ceremony. In the weeks leading up to the event, I had walked through The Domain (the park in which the museum is located) and had seen some people standing right in front of the monument, just staring blankly into it. I thought that they (or I) had gone crazy. Apparently it was simply a part of the ceremony so everything ended up making sense.

The weekend after became much more interesting, weird and informative, mostly due to the following three discoveries which will be detailed below:

1) Kiwi fruits can be eaten with the skin on them.
2) There exist world championships in air guitar.
3) people play quidditch in real life.

1)
I was told by James and Ilana (both from Flat 15) that there actually is nothing wrong with eating the skin of the kiwi fruit which did surprise me a lot (I think it was new for them as well). I have never really been too fond of the kiwi fruit, mostly because they are not handy at all. Either you have to chop a lot of “sides” of them to get a respectable chunk of pure pulp or you have to use both a knife and a spoon (or alternatively a spife, which should be especially useful for eating kiwi fruits). After having eaten a whole kiwi fruit with skin and everything Friday night without feeling particularly ill afterwards, I decided to look up whether or not it had actually been a good idea. Wikipedia explains it pretty well:

“The kiwifruit skin is edible and contains high amounts of dietary fiber. In a fully matured kiwifruit one study showed that this as much as tripled the fiber content of the fruit. In addition, as many of the vitamins are stored immediately under the skin, leaving the skin intact greatly increases the vitamin c consumed by eating a single piece of kiwifruit when compared to eating it peeled. As with all fruit, it is recommended that if eating the skin, the fruit be washed prior to consumption.”

2)
I have heard about air guitar before, of course. The art of going berserk on a fictional guitar isn’t a completely new idea, I think. However, I had always thought that was something that happened behind close doors in rooms of teenagers with unrealistic dreams of becoming a rock star… I was wrong (which is something, might I add, which doesn’t occur that often). Apparently there exists championships where you have to dress like a fool and jump around on the stage like an idiot while pretending to be in control of the sounds of the loud guitar solo coming from the speakers behind you. “Championships” as in people actually going halfway around the world each year to weird places (this year Finland) to compete in being the best in the world at this! The concept has finally arrived in Denmark this year where the first annual championship in air guitar was just held. Of course Sidney Lee was the host… people reading this blog in English probably has no idea about who Sidney Lee is and that is probably for the best. He is one of those people who is famous for being famous. If you are really curious about him, I will suggest you go back to one of my posts from August last year where I made a post with a bad, bad Sidney Lee reference. Anyway, in New Zealand the phenomenon (air guitar, not Sidney Lee) has apparently existed for years. Friday some weeks ago Ilana, Kirsty (both from Flat 15), one of Kirsty’s friends and I went to the official finale of this year’s NZ air guitar competition. It was a very bizarre experience which I have trouble explaining better than the photos below will.

Unfortunately I seem to have forgotten the names of most of the artists but I can deliver other info instead. Info 1: The participants had roadies! I have no idea what their job was but apparently it does take a whole team to setup fictional instruments.

Info 2: The winner was found using three criterai: 1) “Technical merit”, meaning how well the participants pretend to hit the right frets, accords etc. 2) “Stage presence”, whether the participant has the charisma of a rock star and manages to capture the audience with his performance. 3) “Airness”, a very subjective criterion stating how much the performance on the scene is art in and by itself.

Info 3: The competition consisted of two rounds. In the first round the participants get to decide which piece they are going to pretend to play guitar to. In the second round all the artists perform to the same song. This meant that we had to listen to the same thing ten times in a row (one for each participant plus the initial playing of the song so they had an idea about what they were going to pretend to play). Randy on the photo was our favorite and we had expected him to win. Apparently he did not which we did not find out until later: We left the show before the winner had been found.

3)
Quidditch is a fictional sport from the Harry Potter books. The participants fly around on magic broomsticks, throw balls through rings and after each other and try to catch a small magic ball with wings (the snitch) which flies around by its own volition.

In other words its a sport which fits perfectly into the real world and the laws of physics which govern it. Muggle quidditch is the fitting name for the sport where people run around with broomsticks between their legs, dressed in capes while they throw balls through custom-made rings which have been designed with that specific purpose in mind. The most important element is of course the snitch which role is played by a neutral player, dressed in gold and wings, who runs around in an area much bigger than the field and needs to be caught before the game can end. A fantastic combination of dodgeball, (European) handball, hide-and-seek, sometimes ultimate frisbee and an enormous amount of insanity.

The reason I mention this sport is because I a couple of weeks ago (same weekend as the air guitar competition) found out that it exists as a real life sport.Auckland Quidditch Association currently has 446 members who constitute 19 different teams which are now going to play in a tournament. I became extremely excited when I realized that they had apparently played their opening match of the season in The Domain (the park just two minutes from where I live) just a week before. I also became very disappointed with the people who had actually seen this going on for not having mentioned to me that people had invented this crazy game and were competing in it for real. Some people (Kirsty for example) did however share my fascination of the absurd fact that this actually exists as an organized sport. Unfortunately I have yet to see the sport live but hopefully I will get to see it before I leave New Zealand.

We tried to look for quidditch in The Domain… all we found was a weirdly colored sky.

So much nothingness… next time it will be about wine tasting and failed attempts to go on hiking trips.

1) One of the reasons that I had an easy time deciding to go to Samoa was the fact that I would have to renew my visa anyway in order to stay here until July. Since I’m not officially studying at the university down here (I’m not paying any tuition fee this semester) I was not able to apply for a student visa. Also, since I’m not getting paid to write my thesis down here (besides the wonderful government grant (SU) everybody in Denmark gets for studying) I wouldn’t be able to apply for a working permit either. The easiest thing to do was to simply leave the country, return a week later and get three extra months as a tourist in New Zealand. This way I also avoided paying the about $200 it costs to apply for such a visa. This just made Samoa even more attractive. Even though I had been by the immigration office before I left, to get a confirmation that this would be a perfectly legit thing to do, I was still nervous when I came back to the airport in Auckland. There was NO problem entering the country though. They just smiled and let me in. And to think I have to be held back for an hour in Chicago, just because I want to visit my sister.

2) When you walk through the villages in Samoa all the locals (especially the children) screams “bye” after you. I don’t know if it is because they can’t tell the difference between “hi” and “bye” or if it is because they just want you to disappear as fast as possible which results in an immediate farewell.

3) In Samoa they drive on the left side of the road. They used to drive on the right side, right up until 7 September 2009 where they changed. The reason was that it is economically better to drive on the same side of the road as the majority of other countries in the area. A lot of people still drive around in cars with the driver sitting at the left. It is now illegal to sell spare parts to these kind of cars.

They have arrows everywhere on the roads to remind people which side to drive on.

I do feel I had warned about the above points being uninteresting. I will therefore disclaim any responsibility for the boredom that might have originated from reading the above. I have also chosen not to write the quotations from my Samoa trip since I have concluded that it will be extremely uninteresting for the people who haven’t already heard about the stupid things especially Max chose to say during that week.

A week was spent on Samoa. We were eight people on the trip: Øystein (Norwegian), Tor (Norwegian), Helle Kristine (Norwegian), Max (French), Jocelyn (French), Richard (English), Regina (German) – and then me, the only Dane. I have come to the conclusion that the trip is best described through photos.

The first day we took the ferry to Savai’i, the most western of Samoa’s two main islands.

Each night we slept in fales (huts), placed on or just by the beach. Amazing experience. These fales are build without walls so you get cooled by the wind during the night. This was also needed with 30 degrees (Centigrade) day and night and about 80% humidity (except for when it was pouring down).

Sun rise my first day in Samoa.

We chose to continue by bus the second day. The bus was filled with locals who were all returning from the biggest town in Savai’i with their newly bought groceries which were spread all over the floor of the bus. They were extremely nice and friendly, squeezing even closer together to make room for us tourists. Try guessing the full name of the bus (people are often wrong).

Jane’s Beach Fales where we stayed a couple of days provided some entertainment the first night. They postulated it was “traditional” Samoan dance. Here they are dancing to the sound of Grease Lightnin’ (also note the gigantic speakers in the background).

People in Samoa are very religious. Every village (which can easily consist of just a couple of houses) has its own church. At some point we considered renting bikes to go around the island on a Sunday. We were warned that people on especially the northern part of Savai’i didn’t like to see people doing any kind of exercise, including biking (that I, as a Dane, see biking more as a means of transportation is something completely different) on a holy Sunday. Sunday morning we went to church to get insight into what the locals spend their Sundays on. They were extremely grateful that we had bothered to visit their church. They all thanked us after the service, which was partly held in English so we could understand it.

To complete the Sunday we went to another church, this one of a somewhat different kind, though. It was overflown by lava about 100 years ago and is of course not used any more (except as a tourist attraction).

The Lonely Planet book about the Pacific contains only about 20 pages about Samoa which probably says a bit about how few tourist attractions are actually located in the country. The Samoa experience is mostly about relaxing at beautiful beaches, perhaps with a bit of snorkeling. Which I am not going to complain about. The guide book does mention a few places worth visiting, though. One of them are these so-called “blowholes”, special rock formations which makes the water splash meters into the air when the waves hit against them.

We also went to the Afu Aau Waterfall. Here Richard is seen swimming around.

We spent a single night at “The Author’s Choice” from Lonely Planet from a couple of years ago, Virgin Cove. It was by far the most expensive place we stayed and seemed a bit too “touristy” and “protected” for my taste. Of course it did not help that it rained constantly the day we had there. I was rather productive, though, as the photo above proves. The day did not become a complete waste of time, after all.

From the most expensive place we could find in Samoa, we went to the cheapest one. In the village Tafatafa we stayed three days at some fales owned by a woman who had spent about 40 years in New Zealand but had now returned home to enjoy the relaxed Samoan lifestyle. She seemed extremely happy to have visitors from Europe – apparently, we were the first ones to visit from that part of the world. The place had been hit by the tsunami about seven months earlier and they were still rebuilding. Since tourism is a big part of the Samoan economy, the family had been promised money if they quickly rebuilt the facilities so they could keep attracting tourists. Seven months later they still had not seen any money from the government. Oh, and the photo is one of me and a crab.

Accommodation for three nights and eight meals ended up costing about 55 NZD per person. Not bad at all. Among other things we were served coconuts, as it can be seen on the photo above.

Richard, Øystein and I went past Robert Louis Stevenson’s house which is now a museum. Robert is probably best known for two books: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Treasure Island. He spent the last five years of his life on Samoa.

In order to feel more at home, Stevenson had a fireplace installed in the living room. Of course it was never used (there wasn’t even a chimney) since it is way too hot in Samoa to have any kind of fire lit inside.

Before we went back to Auckland with the plane we visited a market in the capital Apia. Rhichard invested in a giant battle axe.

”Me and colors” – after a week without shaving.

I appologize for this very “fact”-based post (“then we did this and then we did that”) but I hope some of the nice photos can make up for it. As always, all my photos from my adventures in New Zealand (and now Samoa) can be seen at Flickr. I also have some quotes from the trip which I will probably put up at some point. I think they might only be funny if you know Max in particular – but I’ll still put them up. Also! I will tell you about quidditch soon (see, that is an excellent teaser).

The above does of course not mean that I will spend my entire semester in Auckland. Tomorrow I will leave for Samoa, one of the islands in The Pacific. It is placed in the middle of nowhere and I assume it just lies there, looking gorgeous with its tropical climate and nice beaches. It will be fun, although we still don’t have any idea about what we are going to see or do on the island during the seven days we are there. I’m sure we will figure something out, though. I also plan to do a couple of hikes before too long; the hiking boots I invested in last semester needs to be used again soon.

Now that there doesn’t happen too much exciting stuff I feel is worth telling about on the blog I might as well explain a bit about the project which I have gone to New Zealand to write (hm, even when I translate it it is an extremely bad sentence). Unfortunately I have chosen to finish this blog post just minutes before I have to go to bed in order to be “ready” (if that’s possible after less than five hours of sleep) for the Samoa trip. The story about my project will therefore have to wait for another time. That’s twice in a row I have posted a blog post without any pictures. I will make up for it next time, I assume. Anticlimatic endings” tag achieved once again.

“Even today I am bitterly annoyed that I have ever supported such a bunch of moccasin-wearing half-naked loincloth-wrapping face- and body-painted bison-grease-as-an-early-alternative-to-Dax-Wax-in-the-hair-rubbing-and-afterwards-with-eagle-feathers-decorating growth-of-beard-lacking hardly-photogenic fond-of-finery-not-to-say-androgynous-bordering-gayness the-outright-metro-sexuality-trend-foreseeing-Village-People-inspiring but also with some more masculine and warrior like sides and on that account tomahawk-wielding knife-throwing bow-thrusting fast-riding scalp-taking torture-practicing smoke-signal-up-sending “ug ug”-expressing stagecoach-robbing cavalry-slaughtering beaver-skin-for-firewater-trading rain-dancing cactus-eating peace-pipe-in-a-circle-around-the-bonfire-sucking painful-sun-dance-ritual-performing hooknosed and with the-hand-over-the-eyes-for-shade-far-out-in-the-horizon-scouting bear-hunting canoe-sailing paddle-paddling shoe-fucking tepee-slash-wigwam-inhabiting ill-fated-treaty-signing-and-henceforth-for-ever-at-a-reservation-placed Manitou-also-called-Wakan-Tanka-worshipping dream-catching soul-traveling horse-whispering wolf-dancing and by-and-large with the wild-animals-on-the-prairie close-communicating drum-playing and at-certain-special-ceremonies-around-ingeniously-carved-totem-poles-wildly-in-trance-dancing for twenty-four-dollars-and-a-bag-of-glass-beads-one’s-own-native-country-to-the-palefaces-away-giving once-at-the-Littlebig-Horn-River-winning-but-subsequently-tribe-for-tribe-via-the-Gatling-gun-greatly-eradicated flute-tooting mesacline-tripping spirit-conjuring gibberish-speaking and at-especially-stupid-occasions-with-even-more-special-and-stupid-bison-headgear-wearing even-today-with-rugged-but-dexterous-fingers-bird-feather-animal-bones-stupid-jewelry-with-sale-from-this-year’s-Roskilde-Festival-in-mind-producing and subsequently straight-away-for-the-profit-casino-buying sweat-lodge-frequenting pathfinding dart-throwing self-sufficient in-the-forrest-shitting and last but not least with the Greenlandic-Eskimos-about-sad-cultural-heritage-and-inclination-to-addiction-to-drinking-tightly-competing BASTARDS!”

That is, in fact, a single sentence. And now the explanation: I cannot take credit for that beautifully constructed sentence, unfortunately. Instead the credit should go to the Danish comedian Anders “Anden” (“The Duck”) Matthesen. He is basically the biggest genius in Danish show business, having created brilliant CD’s, radio shows, movies, stand-up shows etc. Everything he touches turns into gold, he always reinvents himself and come up with new approaches to entertaining people which have never been seen before. The sentence above proves that the man is brilliant. Not so much because of its content word-by-word – it is a fairly racist and complicated way to say “Native Americans” – but the fact that he actually manages to remember that one sentence and express it without a single pause is just mind-boggling. And he is not racist – the sentence is taken out of context from a joke which goes far deeper. Even though everything he does is hysterically funny he always manages to also have a morale behind his shows which is also impressive.

And that is what happens when I have a quiet Friday night where I watch a bit of standup. I don’t want to know how long I spent writing that sentence down (in Danish) and just to translate it afterwards.

In my last post I mentioned that I have moved back to PSV. I can see my old flat from my room and I have also spent a good deal of time with the crew from Flat 15 where I used to live last semester. Since I, for some reason, have made it a habit to list people, I will continue that trend, listing the people from the flat that has almost become my “second home” down here. Since I am a bit tired the list will only mention name and nationality:

Øystein: Norwegian
James: Canadian
Ilana: American
Kirsty: English
Esther: German

I met Øystein last semester although we seldom met or spent time together – that has changed this semester. The rest are all “new” to The University of Auckland. They were so kind as to let me sleep on the couch in their living room the day I before I could move into my own room in PSV (the day after the fire at my hostel) even though it was barely only Øystein that knew me at that point. I was of course quite grateful for that.

The view from my room – I can see my old flat from here.

A couple of weeks ago (yeah, I am still a bit behind with the blog) we (Flat 15, Stefani the Canadian, Jeremy the American and I, the Dane) went to Mount Eden, the highest natural point of Auckland, to enjoy the sunset. It was a nice trip which once again gave me an opportunity to play around with my new camera.

Random guy skipping past in the background.

The group enjoying the sunset.

James posing.

Sunset at Mount Eden.

The next photos I have are from the surf trip last weekend. However, before I get to that I want to mention that I have also been to my first cricket match ever. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures from this drama since I had no idea I was going to a cricket match when I went to the university in the morning. But I could not say no when I got the offer to go which meant that I went to the cricket match with all my school stuff and my squash cloths which I didn’t get to use that day. We arrived a couple of hours into the match but apparently that is no big deal. I didn’t have any clue about what was going on for the first couple of hours but slowly the game started to make sense. Some of the other spectators helped us understand some of the finer details of the game which was quite kind of them. I have trouble coming up with any other kind of sport where everybody seems so relaxed. Curling might be close. I have been told baseball might also be kind of similar. Tour de France does have a pretty relaxing feeling to it as well but it does have some periods of intense drama which doesn’t really seem to exist in cricket. We were at the cricket match for seven (7!) hours. We did have a break of about one and a half hours between the two innings where we left the stadium to get some food. I have never tried to leave the stadium during a sports match just to come back later without having missed any part of the game (the players also had a break when we were eating). The guy who invented cricket must have been a man of great patience. Not only does the original cricket rules allow a game to last up to five days; if there is the slightest bit of rain, the rest of the match will be put off until half an hour after the rain has stopped. We did get to see that rule applied… hooray! We spent seven hours looking at men throwing a ball about 500 times while some other guy tried to block it with his bat, followed by one of the other ten players on the field walking to the ball to give it to the guy who threw it in the first place. We watched that, and then also an hour of some vehicles dragging a big “towel”, trying to dry the field after the rain while the crowd kept hoping that one of the guys on the field would be tripped by the “towel”. Unfortunately it did not happen. A very interesting experience indeed.

Since this is a post filled with randomness: I also want to mention that I am trying to be a bit active down here. I have played squash and run a couple of times. I have signed up for “Handball for beginners”, the only handball thing they offer at The University of Auckland. Unfortunately it is probably a bit too much a “beginners’” thing for me even though it is about seven years since I last touched a handball (which seems a bit scary to me). I was offered to join the “advanced” team for their games so I will probably do that if my feet can survive it.

Also! And this may come as a surprise, especially for me, I have started taking salsa lessons… I am not entirely sure how THAT happened but I guess it comes from some misguided idea I had before returning that I wanted to try some new stuff. Besides, both Øystein and Ilana tried to convince me and in the end it apparently worked somehow. So now I am going to have eight salsa lessons. Two of them have already been completed, although I have only participated in the first due to sickness (on my part) at the time of the second one. That probably means I will feel even more lost next time, as if my lack of sense of rhythm wasn’t enough.

I apologize that this post can seem a bit disconnected – I will once again use the explanation that I am kind of sick (even though the real reason is laziness). With that apology I will allow myself to take another weird jump. I spend most of my weekdays on my master thesis – the thing I am basically here for and which I have not mentioned on my blog so far. But now I HAVE mentioned it and then there can be no doubt that I am working hard on it with Skott. I assume that I will make a post at a later point, explaining exactly what the thesis is about and which might make people die from boredom. I can reveal that it is about containers… But that will have to wait till some other time.

While the weekdays are spent on the project, my weekends are fairly free. That means that I last weekend found myself on my way to Raglan, the surfers’ paradise in New Zealand. Going there was probably another one of those “let’s try something new” ideas. It was an extremely nice weekend with beautiful weather, a nice beach and a good group consisting of eight people, mainly from Parnell Student Village: Three Canadians (they are the new Germans this semester – they are everywhere), two Americans (although one of them claimed he could also be called a Kiwi), a French guy, a Norwegian and then me, the Dane. We lived at a hostel a bit outside of Raglan which looked like it was placed in the middle of a jungle in Colombia (or any other country in South America, I presume). It was really nice with free pool table, decent cooking facilities and then there was the sauna which we chose to use both nights. The surf went surprisingly well. With that I mean that I got through it unhurt; I did not drown (my initial criteria for success), destroy my ankles or hurt myself in any other way. I (and the rest of the members of the group) all managed to get up on the surfboards at least a couple of times. When I got home from the surf trip I realized that I had had another encounter with my arch nemesis. I am of course talking about the sandfly which had left a couple of stings at my feet which will now bother me extremely for the next many nights. I am considering trying to come up with some kind of scheme to take revenge. I do owe those bastards some kind of practical joke. But then again, I am not sure if insects understand practical jokes.

I actually don’t have any photos of the surf itself so you will have to just be content with a picture of me… and in the following photos, the other people that were with me on the trip.

Øystein and Max in a friendly fight on the beach.

Stefani, Laura, Robin and James sitting on a trunk.

A goat and the small tent it lives in at the side of the road – it was actually NOT part of the group.

Max with a guitar.

And to also have a photo of the last person on the trip:: Ilana in the middle (Max at the right, me at the left) after a well-deserved lunch in Raglan before going back to Auckland.

In the end I want to talk a bit about the internet in New Zealand once again which I also did a couple of times last semester (as I am sure the people who have somehow managed to stick with the blog that will easily recall). However, I have also promised to not complain as much about stuff this time around, so I’ll just not mention the internet… and this way another post can get the tag “anticlimatic endings”.

After having been home in Denmark for the two coldest months of the year (fantastic planing by me, I really deserver praise for that) – actually the coldest January month in 23 years or something like that – I decided to go back to summer in New Zealand. But you already know all about that since my entire blog post last time was about my trip there through Boise. No, the reason people must have returned to this blog once again must be to hear about my first weeks in this “the land on the other side of the Earth” as the Danish name for the country ought to be if I had any say in it. At least it is way more descriptive than “Ny Sjælland”, the Danish translation of “New Zealand” which basically is the name of the Danish island where our capital Copenhagen is placed – it is very flat and nothing like New Zealand at all.

I arrived in New Zealand the 23rd at 11 o’clock, exactly as planned. Contrary to my arrival in the US I had no troubles at the border even though I, honest as I always am, told them that I was going to enter on a visitor’s visa but planned to apply for a student visa when I had found a place to live: “No problem, welcome back, and have a nice stay”. A very good example on the nice attitude most Kiwis have to visitors and life down here.

Skott picked me up in the airport in a shiny Subaru Legacy ‘91 which is still in perfect condition even after our trip to The South Island a couple of months before. We dropped our stuff off at a backpackers close to the university and relaxed for a couple of hours. Afterwards we went to a quiz night for international students at the university bar, Shadows. I have never really understood jetlag; I have been told that it is supposed to be hard to arrive in the morning at a new place after having traveled through several time zones and that it can take some people days to get over. As I see it you just have to keep awake until a decent hour in the evening before you go to bed. That can’t really be that hard, unless of course you have just been through weeklong torture sessions with someone actively keeping you awake every single second of the day. I assume only a small part of the people complaining about jetlag has been through that. Personally I have never had any real problems with jetlag during my visits to USA or New Zealand, just so you know (and I know you are extremely curious to know about that).

I had planned to spend the rest of the week trying to find a place to live, something that proved to be a bit harder than I had initially expected. It actually only took me about a week to find something but it did feel like much longer. I guess I’m too organized to be able to live in a small hostel room in the middle of a big city for a longer period of time; it is horrible not to know exactly where all your stuff is since it is hidden away in all kinds of weird pockets in your backpack. I did look at a lot of flats during the first week, both quite central, only a couple of minutes walk from the university but also further away, about 30 minutes away. I discovered how some people live in awful conditions and also did meet a couple of quirky personalities during my visits to the different flats that were looking for new flatmates. Even though most people didn’t say it right out I could feel that most felt it was a problem that I was only going to be in the country for about four months. A couple of people promised to contact me when they had decided who would get the room (most places had at least twenty applications during the first couple of days) even if I wasn’t the winner of the popularity contest. However I never did get a reply from anybody – nobody liked me (or probably more accurate: Nobody wanted the trouble of having to find a new flatmate after just four months but the other formulation sounds so much more dramatic so I’ll let that be the one outside the parenthesis).

Everything worked out in the end, though. I ended up in Parnell Student Village (PSV) where I also lived last semester. It wasn’t the original plan; last semester I thought it was quite expensive for what we got, even though I kind of liked the place. But during my visit to other flats I found out that it was actually just the price. I saw flats in worse conditions that charged more, and in most of them the room was completely unfurnished.

This time I live in a flat which is a bit different from all the others in PSV since we are eight people (compared to the 4-6 living in the other flats). It is also meant to be only for post graduates, i.e. the more mature students. I am fine with that and the rest of the flat is luckily occupied by nice people. The gallery of characters is:

- Anna, German girl, studying law
- Naira, German girl, studying mathematics
- Gillian, Philipinian girl
- Jing Jing (or something like that), Chinese girl
- Jennifer, Canadian girl, studying education
- Isidro, Spanish boy, studying psychology
- Blair, Kiwi boy, studying film
- Jonas (yeah, I’m going to mention myself, just to make the list complete), Danish boy, studying applied mathematics

As you can see it is a good mix of international students which of course is quite exciting. It is almost like the flat is two flats put together since we have to bathrooms, two toilets, two ovens, two sinks, two microwave ovens, a single toaster, no glasses etc. – you understand what I mean. So far it has been no problem living eight people together.

This is interesting. And this is another sentence which seems to just appear out of thin air. The first sentence (“This is interesting”) is to make it easy for people to get to this point in the post quickly because it is now that it becomes “exciting” (there is no reason for the second sentence “And this is another sentence (…)” – it is not the one that is the interesting part). I have spend my first time back in New Zealand on other stuff besides looking for a place to live. For instance I woke up in a burning hostel the night before I was supposed to move out of there. To make that story complete, however, I will have to start some time before that at The Chinese Lantern Festival (there is no such thing as chronological order to this post). It is a festival in Auckland which gathers a ridiculous amount of people on a small area. These people can they walk around and enjoy all the cheap paper figures (often looking like animals) which lights up everywhere in the grass and the trees, buy Sponge Bob Square Pants balloons which the Chinese people apparently love, eat all kinds of different Chinese food and (most importantly) listen to karaoke sung by some of the worst “singers” in history (I didn’t participate in the latter even though I might have been able to qualify for it with my beautiful singing voice).

When there are so many people gathered in one place there is a good chance that you’ll meet some of God’s most beautiful children. Here two of them are posing.

Dragons belong to every chinese celebration

Long dragon.

Everybody went crazy (in a joyful way) when this man started stealing babies. At first I thought it was some kind of weird Chinese ritual (they do have problems with too many children being born in China, hence their famous one-child policy). He did hand back the babies, however. I was afterwards told it was the prime minister of New Zealand. Now I can check the meeting with him off of my todo list.

Me and some kind of Buddha look-a-like with a big Swastika symbol on its chest.

Colorful tiger.

More colors.

Woman looking like she’s about to commit a crime.

The whole thing ended with some fireworks.

You could also buy all kinds of useless crap which Vegard and Skott utilized to buy a waving golden cat which was going to be decoration for their new flat which they were moving into the next day. Apparently this cat is supposed to bring fortune but we quickly agreed that it would try to kill them in their sleep. Its treacherous smile and the uncanny continuation of the waving seemed to be a bad omen.

Vegard og Skott were so happy just after they had bought the indispensable cat.

It is always a great sign of quality when the packing contains “alternative” English. The text on the box reads:
——————————————————————————————————————————
WARNING:
1. Please don’t place the unsteady and solid place.
2. Please do not touch or move at will.
3. Please do not use the overdue battery. the overdue battery may make the product electric circuits damaged because of the electric leakage.

THE USAGE MUST KNOW:
1. Please don’t use to refresh battery.
2. Please don’t throw battery away in the fire the in order to prevent occurrence explosion.
3. Please don’t new old battery hybrid usage.
——————————————————————————————————————————

They had not had the cat for many hours before our fear about the cat’s evil intentions were confirmed. We had placed the cat on some shelves in one side of the room where it could sit and stare directly at Skott’s bed in the other end. He didn’t feel completely safe about this when he went to sleep. After an hour’s sleep we were woken up by this really annoying alarm clock. I thought it would be really nice if the people responsible for that would hurry up and turn it off – it was almost like someone tried to wake up the whole hostel. Someone even had the indecency to start hammering on our door which completely ruined any attempt of going back to sleep. But now when the smell of smoke had become so bad it wasn’t really the nicest place to sleep anyway, I thought. As you might have already figured out a fire had started at our hostel. There was no big panic and no flames to see, but you could definitely see the smoke. Even as we were walking down the stairs firefighters were coming up to put out the fire – extremely quick response time. I was quite impressed by the show. The whole street was filled with firetrucks, ambulances etc., probably around 15 in total for this very small fire where you couldn’t even see any flames. We had to spend about two hours outside, waiting for them to put it out. Everything was filmed by a film crew who were there to record stuff for an upcoming TV series with the working title “Fire Investigation”. They performed a couple of interviews but I have a hard time seeing how it can ever be edited into anything which will be just close to exciting to watch. The cameras even followed us into the hostel when we were led back to our new rooms – we couldn’t get back to our own room and our belongings until the next day. I don’t know if they are going to add some kind of special effects later on with us walking through the flames as the hard working students we are, only thinking about sleep so we can concentrate on our studies. It would probably be a better story than what actually happened: Some electrical components short-circuiting. To make a short story even longer than I have already made it, I can report that all my belongings were fine although they did smell a bit like smoke.

This is how our room looked the next morning. Skott’s bed was placed right next to the wall with the big hole in it. All his stuff had been moved to the middle of the room, without any damage, meaning that the firefighters had been able to take it fairly slowly.

Through the hole.

The stairs.

And here I probably have to stop. I have (once again!) somehow written way too much about too little. I have actually experienced a bit more down here (or, I at least have some pictures left I still haven’t presented on this blog) but that will have to wait until next time. Before I end it completely, however, I have promised Øystein, the Norwegian who now lives in my old room in PSV, that I would mention James, a Canadian who also lives in my old flat (not in the same room as I used to live in, obviously – it would have been weird if both Øystein and James lived there at the same time). So now I have mentioned him. Both him, Øystein and the rest of the people from that flat will probably appear again later on this blog since I have been spending some time with the crew from Flat 15 (this could be seen as an alternative teaser, aimed at a specific and very small group of people, if they even care about reading about themselves on this blog).

After a couple of days of Christmas hell in New York I went back to Denmark which at that point was covered in snow, ice, coldness and darkness on one of the very last days of the now so (in)famous climate meeting in Copenhagen. Yes, I was in the Danish airport at the same day as President Obama arrived! Wow! Christmas was celebrated in the traditional way. Afterwards I returned to the apartment in Copenhagen I have been living in for more than four years now. This time, however, I had to live in the smallest of the three rooms since the two others were occupied by one of my brothers, Rune, and Robert the German who had rented a room while I was abroad. During January I worked as a teaching assistant in a course (Mathematical Programming with Modelling Software) at my home university, DTU – so now I can check that off my list of things to do. I also spent January enjoying being back in my small homemade nerd world, with the big tv, video game consoles, Blu-ray movies and I-don’t-know-what. To the collection I also added a new Mac Mini which now functions as a mediacenter which makes it possible for me to watch Danish TV from abroad plus a fancy remote which can control everything at once, replacing my collection of five-six remotes that I needed before. Very interesting, I know…

That is an example of how you can tell about two months: Brief and precise – something very atypical for this blog, and if I know myself the blog won’t continue like that in the future either. Therefore, let me start to tell you about the last couple of week in much more detail just to show the contrast (don’t worry, there will be some photos mixed into the text in a minute as you have probably already noticed unless you are equipped with unusually focused eyes with no peripheral vision – or if you just haven’t scrolled down yet).

I went abroad once again on February 15 (or is it the 15th of February, 15 February or something completely different? I can never really figure it out in English – and nobody ever answers these questions I pose in my blog posts). This time to (initially) visit my sister in Boise, Idaho. I had managed to get my hands on some fairly ok tickets, especially considering I only booked the flight about a week before I left Denmark. A seat at an emergency exit (lots of room for the legs) in the plane between Copenhagen and Chicago where I had a short stop before continuing directly to Boise – it could hardly be more efficient. It is always an “experience” to arrive in the States since their border control (or whatever you call it) can seem ridiculously strict at times. Upon my arrival in Chicago I was led into a small room, mostly filled with Spanish speaking people it seemed. Here I had to wait for an hour since they found it strange that I was visiting my Danish sister who is now living in the US. In the end they let me continue my meticulously planned trip which suddenly didn’t seem as well planned as I had thought in the beginning. I had to get through the fairly large airport in Chicago in less than half an hour.

And so I did!!1!11!oneone

I will let the above linger (I don’t know if you can let text linger but I will anyway) for a bit so it is possible to calm down a bit after all that excitement.

You can enjoy a photo of Obama on the road to help you calm down before we continue:

The Obama figure in my sister’s car had its picture taken plenty of times during my visit in Boise.

I arrived safely in Boise. My baggage chose to stay another half day in Chicago since it apparently didn’t think we had seen enough of the city. I stayed in Boise with my sister, Mie, and her husband-to-be, Keith, for almost a week. Here I was introduced to the two hyperactive dogs, Lucky an Java who proved to be brilliant models for my new, nice camera which I chose to invest in during my visit to the Sttes (Nikon D90 with an awesome18-200 mm lens if anyone cares).

The very first photo taken with my new camera. It is easy to see that my sister is used to working with portrait photos. She knows exactly how to show off the best side of herself when a picture is taken. Being extremely photogenic is something that runs in my family.

Lucky, my sister’s polar bear.

Java, playing in water/mud.

Lucky, the happiest dog in the world.

So you say that a dog has and its owner are alike, and this might prove it. Notice how photogenic Lucky is (the saliva actually hangs all the way from his mouth to the ground) and compare it to my extremely photogenic sister.

I also got to ski for the very first time in my life which I was extraordinarily good at (I will try to put a more positive spin on my blog in the future after I have noticed that the most used tag on my posts is “Me complaining”, albeit I for the most part am fairly sarcastic whenever I complain on this blog). My sister was especially impressed of a situation where I, after having lost one ski after a spectacular stunt, managed to place myself in such a position that I started sliding backwards down the mountain on a single ski. I am definitely a natural at skiing. It was just such a nice feeling to see all the small kids speeding by me as if it is the most natural thing in the world to attach two extremely smooth (or whatever the word is) long planks to your feet and race down a steep mountain without any thought about what danger they put themselves in – while I was once again lying in the snow with my skis spread all over (or at least in two different places). I think that I, with just a bit of practice, will be able to participate in the next Winter Olympics. It should not be that hard to perform that much worse than the other Danish participants. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of my amazing achievements on the mountain so you will have to imagine those yourself.

Now when I am talking about skiing I remember that I haven’t been talking about my ankles for a while. Those who have been following my blog closely (which I think can be counted on one, normal, five-fingered hand) will probably remember that I have mentioned my ankles a couple of times but never during my seven part story about my trip to the South Island. And I even did a couple of hikes on that trip which should have put my week ankles at extreme risk. The thing is that I never did twist/roll my ankles on that trip. Paradoxically (I love a good paradox) I instead managed to twist my ankle on the middle of a street in a completely flat street in New York – something Skott and (a bit later) I thought was quite funny. I also did manage to damage my ankle on my skiing trip, actually a bit more seriously than I usually do. Everything seems fine now, though, thanks for asking. And that will be the last time (for a while) you will have to read about my ankles.

I also got to see a random basketball match in Boise. The best part was the entertainment in the breaks. Most of the time it was small kids performing stuff (crawl through hula hoop rings, drive around on plastic bikes or perform gymnastic moves) but the biggest standing ovation (during the ENTIRE night) was provoked by six free Domino’s pizzas which were handed out in one of the breaks. The crowd went nuts and the lucky winners seemed to be the happiest people in the world when they received their free pizza – I love USA.

It might be a bit hard to see on the small picture but I will tell you what to look for: The woman calling somebody to tell that she just won a FREE pizza… and the man trying to do the Mexican Wave all by himself.

Pepsi! I don’t even drink it that often but it was just an opportunity that couldn’t be missed.

Sunday I sadly had to leave Mie, Keith, Lucky and Java and continue towards New Zealand. It was a trip which did not offer as much excitement as in the airport in Chicago. However I did have to spend 10 hours in horrible LAX (which was planned from the beginning, though). Also, I had a fairly random short stop in Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands in the middle of the Pacific. My guess is that it must be one of the smallest airports in the world (the population on the island is less than 15000) and I don’t even know if it can be classified as an airport. It did seem like an incredibly nice place and definitely not the worst place to have a small break, although it was only about an hour in a small closed off section of the “airport”.

Rarotonga airport.

Rarotonga definitely looked like a place worth visiting.

Rarotonga from above.

Here, just before my arrival in New Zealand, I will leave you, dear reader, craving for more stories from my amazing journey. Since I know that I am slowly becoming somewhat of a “Master of Suspense” (one person has found this blog via Google by searching for “anti-climatic endings”) I can tease that my first week in New Zealand among other things included intense flat hunting… and, a bit more down to earth and closer to my everyday life: me waking up in a burning building. But that will have to wait till next blog post which hopefully will be put up before too long.

After the eventful visit to Queenstown we continued to Christchurch, the “capital” of the South Island. On our way there we passed some beautiful blue lakes.

While Caroline suddenly thought it was “too expensive” to do the proper bungy jump when we were standing on the platform in Queenstown she had no trouble doing this “bungy jump” in Christchurch.

While Skott, Søren and Caroline tried to find somewhere to surf, Kristian and I met up with one of Kristian’s friends who lives in Christchurch. He gave us a guided tour of the outskirts of Christchurch. What you see above is a view of the city.

We had been driving around with three surf boards on our entire trip. Still, the three surfers had not been doing much surfing on our trip. After Christchurch we continued to Kaikoura which is supposed to be the closest thing you come to a surfer’s paradise on the South Island. We had therefore planned to spend three days there so the poor surfers could finally get to do some surfing. Unfortunately there were no waves whatsoever so they had to come up with some other ways to have fun, illustrated by the above photo.

Kaikoura is also well known for its spectacular bird and sea life. People come from a far to swim with dolphins, see albatrosses and watch whales. Caroline and I went on a whale watching trip where we got to see a couple of sperm whales. Unfortunately we never got a chance of getting the famous “tale shot” so we did get a small refund after the trip.

Sunset in Kaikoura.

We lived in a very nice hostel which had both a jacuzzi, swimming pool and a sauna. Here we met Matias, Samantha and their friend Lars. Matias and Samantha are two Danes we had met while studying in Auckland and it was a bit odd to just run into them like that. They joined us for our celebration of our last night on the South Island by camping with us near a beach a bit from Kaikoura.

Here it would have been nice with a photo which we unfortunately never took. However, it still appears pretty clear in my mind, even though I wasn’t even there. We had to get up way too early the next day in order to catch the ferry back to the North Island. Before we left, however, Søren had to be dropped off in Kaikoura since he was going to stay at the South Island. Caroline took care of that and she left Søren at a hostel, all alone and with all the rubbish we had managed to produce on our little camping trip, all his lugage, his surfboard and with “many, many hangovers” as he phrased it. To complete the picture it started raining as soon as Caroline dropped him off. We also had to say goodbye to Caroline that day. We left her in Wellington after having gone on the ferry from Picton.

We took the ferry back to North Island in daylight so we could enjoy the fine view.

We (which now means Kristian, Skott and I) drove to Taupo to spend the night. We had planned to skydive the next day. Unfortunately it was too cloudy and windy. After having waited for a couple of hours for the weather to get better, we had to give up and continue towards Auckland which at this point felt a bit like returning “home”.

In Auckland we spent a couple of days saying goodbye to the last couple of people. The last night we had a barbeque and went to a big Christmas show (Coca-Cola Christmas in the Park) in The Domain. I have mentioned it before, but it still seems extremely weird to try to celebrate Christmas when the sun is beaming down. I associate Christmas with extreme darkness most of the day, and a coldness you just wish would go away immediately. Christmas is indeed a happy time.

Luckily I did manage to get into the proper Christmas mood after four days in Christmas decorated New York. It had all the stressed people you could dream about, a piercing and annoying coldness plus overcrowded streets and shops. Exactly my idea of Christmas. It was a big contrast after having spent some weeks traveling around in the beautiful, sunny, green and scarcely populated South Island of New Zealand… I have a feeling you might be able to guess which I preferred the most. New York was still as impressive as the last time I visited it 2.5 years ago, though, which the photos below are supposed to illustrate.

A lot of the shopwindows were of course decorated for Christmas. Some places they had set up specific queues for people who wanted to get a glimpse of the windows.

We got to see a Broadway-show, Chicago. Here Skott is excited about the show being about to start… this is just before we were told in a strict tone to put away the camera and not use it again while inside the theater.

Of course we had to go by the Statue of Liberty.

We had a “tourist day” where we visited the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Bodies – The Exhibition, American Museum of Natural History (where the above photo is from), Leonardo da Vinci’s Workshop and ended at high up in The Empire State Building.

The view from The Empire State Building was excellent, just as it had been two and a half years ago.

Just to end this blog post in a weird way (which isn’t actually that odd for this blog) I want to give some advice about buying burgers in the US (well, it might be more of a warning). See, the burgers sold in the US apparently don’t have to contain any of the ingredients which usually make that particular kind of food interesting. A burger can, according to the Americans, just consist of a boring white bun and some beef without anything else. No salad, tomato, cucumber, avocado, bacon, egg or whatever people normally try to put in their burgers. Luckily, you do get to add ketchup to your burger if you wish to and it is usually apparent if the burger comes with cheese or not (usually indicated by the small word “cheese” in front of the word “burger” in the menu). And this bun with some beef they had the nerve to charge $12 for.

Actually, I would be able to continue complaining about stuff in the US. For example I don’t get how you can have a system where you can’t trust the price tags on things since they always add taxes afterwards. Or the mandatory tips which would be included automatically in the salary if you lived in a normal, civilized country… I think, however, that I have complained about this stuff before, back when I studied at Caltech in California and also wrote a blog. Therefore, I will stop complaining about the States (for now) – this blog is supposed to be about my experiences in New Zealand, and therefore also my complaints about that country. Luckily there will be a lot more room for that the next half year since I will be returning to the other end of the world, this time to write my thesis.

So… stay tuned!

I should probably start with: “Kepler Track is a 3-4 days walk which goes over…” since this was what I teased in the end of my previous post. In the meantime, however, I have completely forgotten what sentence I was in the midst of formulating so instead I will start another place and tell you that Kepler Track is another one of those famous Great Walks, the meaning of which the loyal reader of my blog at this point will be fully informed about. As the teaser indicated it is a 3-4 day walk which we (Kristian, Skott and I) decided to perform in three. As promised the trip will below be described through photos (with captions – I have always been taught that you should never use a picture unless you also include a text which describes what the picture represents).

Day 1:

Ready for three days of hiking with an exceptionally performed haka. One again the loyal reader of my blog will be able to recollect that I already previously have described this New Zealand phenomenon (hint: You do remember the tale of Rotorua, and especially the night spend entertained by a Maori tribe, right?). The blog reader who has only just started reading my blog because that is the newest trend and “everybody else does it, so it must be the cool and right thing to do” (just like Facebook) I will leave confused – until he or she follows the hyperlink Wikipedia I have conveniently provided on the word “haka”, or until he/she goes back to my previous post about Rotorua. Of course there is a great chance that this newest of my blog readers will already have left the site at this point of his/her own volition.

This photo describes the first day pretty well: We mostly walked in something that reminded me of a normal forest. The only difference was that the path just kept going steeply upwards.

I was extremely happy when we finally reached a clearing where we got a view of the city we had left a few hours earlier and which now lay far beneath us. I became even more happy when I realized that we had managed to walk the scheduled distance in a bit more than half of the time the signs claimed it would take. The view over the mountains was spectacular.

Day 2:

Another day, another haka – this time at the top of Mount Luxmore.

The whole second day was just amazing. We walked on the mountain rims (I don’t know if that’s the words but hopefully you get what I mean) most of the day and had a terrific view as the photo above hopefully mangages to illustrate.

Skott and me on tour in the mountains (with Kristian left with the duty of photographer a bit behind us).

Once again we met the Kea bird (uhh, another reference to one of my previous blog posts!). We tried for a while to get it to fly but it just kept jumping a few steps backwards. At one point it cleverly chose to move to the path that we were supposed to cross, basically blocking our way. Such a nice bird.

”If you start and end the day with a haka, everything should probably be fine”… is a saying I’m quite sure no one have ever used but it was still a proverb we chose to follow. Here we are close to the campsite on the second day after having descended from the mountains. It is a water fall you see behind us (once again proving the importance of captions – there is no way you would be able to tell what that thing in the background was without me telling you).

While we the first night stayed in a hut in the mountains we chose to sleep in a tent on the second day. Here we once again encountered my new arch nemesis, the sandfly, which had turned out in strength (is that really how you say that? Anyways, there were lots of them). They were there solely to bother us and they did a pretty good job of it. In the photo above, Kristian is trying to flee into our tent which unfortunately didn’t protect us much since the sandflies were small enough to get through the mosquito nets. Smoke from a fire didn’t scare them away either. It was an afternoon were we had to eat walking and spent the rest of the day hiding in our sleeping backs in the tent even though it was pretty warm outside. If we just had had the foresight to invest in some insect repellant.

Day 3:

This was what we saw when we woke up the third day. It might not look like much but anyone who have ever encountered sandflies will be terrified by the thought of having slept in a tent filled with these creatures.

Most of the third day was just woods.

The last day we basically had to walk the same distance as we did the whole Abel Tasman trip (the one that took us eight hours the first day and four the second). We therefore set out with a decent pace which meant that we after three hours had walked a distance that would normally take six. Sadly, it isn’t as impressive as it might sound. Every year a bunch of crazy people participate in The Kepler Challenge which basically is a competition to complete the four day Kepler track as fast as possible. The record, set in 2005 by Phil Costley is 4h37m41s which just baffles me. One guy (Malcolm Law), in 2009 managed to do The Kepler Challenge as the last part of the 7-in-7 Challenge – completing seven of New Zealand’s Great Walks in seven days. That’s about 9 marathons. Naturally he was the first person to do so.

Some kilometers from the end we were able to take a bus back to the town. Kristian and I chose to do so (I had some pretty severe blisters going on) while Skott managed to finish in a proper way. Here we are at the crucial point where we have to decide if we want to take a bus back.

And that, my friends, is the great story of the Kepler Track walk but luckily we are not finished at all with the story about my trip to the South Island. Søren met us back in Te Anau – he seemed to be more tired than us who had been hiking for three days straight. He had been drinking in Queenstown. He had come back to Te Anau to pick us up. Meeting Søren again also meant that we had to switch back to speaking English after having discovered that we were actually able to understand each other even when speaking Norwegian and Danish. Some might claim it was “about time” to discover this after having been hanging out with Norwegians for almost half a year. But as soon as Søren, with his thick Copenhagen accent was with us again we had to switch back to the safe English language since Kristian (understandably) couldn’t understand what Søren was saying.

The day after we went back north to a small cosy town called Wanaka, approximately two hours from Queenstown. Here we spent a couple of days relaxing, among other things by going skeet shooting and going to a “puzzling world” complete with a 3D maze and amazing optical illusions.

A maze in two stories which actually wasn’t that easy to navigate through in the beginning. In the end we did get the hang of it, though.

One of the rooms in Wanaka Puzzling World had a leaning floor which could cause some confusion as the photo above might indicate.

They also had a so-called Ames Room, a technique which was used in the Lord of the Rings to get the hobbits to look small compared to e.g. Gandalf:

Unfortunately you have to create your own fun and the people in the background of this photo clearly wants to ruin that fun.

After having played a couple of days in Wanaka we went back to Queenstown where it was time to try some of the things the town is known for. In Queenstown Caroline joined our party once again and we all went on river rafting. I have once before tried to river raft. That was in Tennessee about to and a half years ago. Back then I was told it was a Level 4 river which seemed pretty wild at the time. The one we were on in Queenstown was also supposed to be Level 4 but it was definitely not as crazy as I remember the one from Tennessee. It was still fun, though, but the drive there might have been more extreme. It was a drive on a very narrow gravel road sloping up a giant rock. It is supposed to be the 15th most dangerous road in the world and it was easy to see why. Unfortunately I have no pictures to show for it.

The day after things became even more interesting. It was about time for a bungee jump. And not a small 40 meter jump from a bridge as two of my brothers (Tom and Benjamin) has performed. I’m sure the one my sister did was not much bigger either. No, if you have to do a bungee jump you might as well do it properly and Queenstown gives you that opportunity with the 134 m Nevis Highwire Bungy jump – the third biggest in the world, only topped by one in South Africa and one in Hong Kong. I’m going to let the video speak for itself:

The whole day of the jump I felt pretty relaxed (I’m sure it’s because I didn’t have any idea what I was about to do) and that feeling actually didn’t change much until approximately halfway through the eight seconds of falling where I suddenly realized how stupid a thing it was to do. It was an incredible experience, though.

And with this rush of adrenalin I will leave you waiting for more – the title of this post might have been a bit misleading but you’ll have to wait for “Part 7: The rest of the rest” in order to be able to leave the blog forever, fully satisfied. Of course, if you do that you will miss the upcoming photo post “Signs, fun and games” to which the reviewers write “A thrill ride of emotional outbursts which at some points might get a bit too close to old clichés. However, the developers still manage to make it seem both new and relevant. The hectic scenes filmed with a never-before-seen elegance and parts of the awesome 3D sequences makes Avatar look like a quick sketch made by a three-year-old. The well-written dialog adds a whole new dimension to the media which leads to adrenalin rushes you would not believe achievable. Add to that an innovative AND intuitive control scheme which never fails and you have the perfect blog post worthy of numerous Academy awards – Comic-Con will be going crazy.” It might also have been a fever dream I had… Regardless the blog post will arrive at some point.

The glacier lurking in the background.

Hele “The Jonas Family” before we have gotten to the glacier itself.

Me on my way into a hole in the glacier.

Søren became very excited when he got the opportunity to kill me with an ice axe. In general there was a lot of talk about killing and eating me on the trip. But that is another story.

On the glacier we found the finest kind of mud. Apparently it is supposed to be really good for the skin so naturally we had to put it in our faces.

Parts of the glacier reminded me of Supermans Fortress of Solitude if I used a bit of my incredible imagination.

From the glacier we went on to the little town Haast where we met Sarah and Chris from PSV. They were taking a trip around the South Island in the opposite direction. It was nice to see them again and exchange stories about what we had seen and done on the Island so far. It was also here I solved the problem of my missing watch since Chris and Sarah accepted to go by the kayak place in Punakaiki to see if they had it – and that is the solution to “The Mystery of the Disappeared atch” which I (rather misleadingly) could have named either this or the previous blog post.

The day after we continued towards Queenstown, the big tourist trap of New Zealand which people go to in order to be charged to much money for stuff (especially extreme sports) you can do elsewhere but probably not in such a gorgeous looking location with the surrounding mountains. This Queenstown visit on the 25th of November had been one of the only specific points in our plan from the very beginning since Borghil needed to take a plane back to Auckland from which she had to return to Bergen in Norway a couple of days later. The same day we also left Caroline on her own in Haast – she was going to meet up with her boyfriend Miles for about a week. The family was suddenly split.

Without Caroline and her car it was back to the puzzle from the beginning of the trip. Notice how Borghild laughs at the situation, Kristian just observes Skott’s poor attempt to pack the car, Søren pretends to be occupied by something outside the frame while I disclaim any responsibility for the mess by playing photographer.

Before Borghild left the South Island she (and the rest of us too) got to see an excellent example of the beautiful views New Zealand has to offer.

We stayed in Queenstown a single night. Before we left the next day for Te Anau we went up with the gondolas to get an excellent view of the city. We also rode on luges, sort of a one man sled with wheels on it.

A bit of the view.

The souvenir shop sold lots of interesting crap as souvenirs shop tend to do. Here I’m dressed in a lovely and very fashionable sheep hat with a fitting purse and even a sheep shaped backpack on my back! Especially the cap with the build in mittens is both practical and stylish.

You also meet interesting people in Queenstown. Here: The Purple Lady.

As mentioned we went on to Te Anau where we stayed for a couple of days. Te Anau is situated two hours from Milford Sound, a fiord (not a sound as the name might indicate to some) which is a big tourist attraction in New Zealand – and not without reason. Since we weren’t allowed to walk the Milford Track we went along with the next best thing: A sail trip around the fiord. The drive to Milford Sound was an incredible experience by itself with giant rocks, filled with water falls created by the heavy rain, rising on both sides of the hilly road we were driving on. Not far from the where the ferry left we arrived at a one way tunnel, Homer Tunnel*. While we were waiting to be able to pass through we could admire the fascinating Kea birds** which tried to destroy the parked cars. At one point one of the birds went and sat on the side-view mirror. We got to take a couple of good photos of it before it jumped onto the roof of the car and ran towards the other side of it. Skott was suddenly very eager to roll up his window for some reason.

”Kea on side-view mirror”.

It is a bad idea to have antennas or anything else sticking out of your vehicle when Keas are nearby. A trailer filled with bicycles was severely attacked by the birds who could not stay away from the tempting rubber tires.

An example of the winding road leading to Milford Sound.

The three hour long sailing trip started out with a “Kiwi barbeque” but the meat which looked like chicken also tasted like chicken and we started to think that they might actually not have served us the protected bird which is near extinction. While we were on the boat it really started raining cats and dogs. It was not as bad as it may sound since this meant that the rocks around us became filled with pretty waterfalls which would not have existed if the sun had been shining. We saw small penguins of a specific rare species (only about a 1000 should be left) which can only be found in Milford Sound, sea lions and dolphins that swam with the boat. We also stopped at an underwater observatory where we got to see the sea life a couple of meters below sea level.

See if you can find two small penguins on this photo.

Dolphins swam with the boat for a short while.

Lots of waterfalls.

After the trip we went back to Te Anau. I invested in some new hiking gear including a new big back pack. When we came back to the hostel Søren made pancakes and after the consumption of those he took the car and went back to party in Queenstown for a couple of days. The three last members of the original group of six, Kristian, Skott and I, were going to conquer another Great Walk, Kepler Track.

Kepler Track is a 3-4 days walk which goes over…

And with that small teaser (this post definitely deserves the tag “bad teaser”) I will once again leave you alone.

Foot notes (yeah, I remembered them in this post too):
*About Homer Tunnel
Homer Tunnel is very different from any other tunnel I have ever seen. It has been blasted directly out of the rock and the walls in the 1270 m long tunnel look like they must have done immediately after the blast without any extra form of fortification. The raod is wide enough for two small vehicles to pass each other but if to big busses meet each other inside they will be in very big troubles. Therefore traffic lights have been put up in each end of the tunnel – they change every 15th (fifteenth!) minute. This is only in the summer periods, though. In winter time it is too dangerous to have cars queuing up in front of the entrances due to the risk of avalanches. Apparently risking direct collisions between to big vehicles inside a dark tunnel is much better.

**About Kea
Kea is one of the only alpine parrots in the world. The bird is said to be extremely intelligent and incredibly curious. We got to see that ourselves at Milford sound where they flocked around the cars trying to find food, or other interesting objects they could steal, peck or investigate. The bird has received the nickname “The Clown of the Mountains” because of the mess it makes of backpacks, boots and cars which they often destroy or steal small objects from. It is a really impressive bird with it’s green feathers and red parts underneath the wings. It is really big and does not seem to be afraid of humans at all. The bird can only be found in New Zealand and there are not that many of them left.

Marahau is placed by Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand’s smallest national park covering an area of 225.3 square kilometers. The reason we had gone there was due to rumors about it being a fairly pretty area and I can indeed confirm these rumors now. You can enjoy the nature in Abel Tasman in different ways: Since the national park contains a fairly long stretch of coast it is very popular to sail around in kayaks. However, we chose to go on a small hike instead on the Abel Tasman Coast Track, one of New Zealand’s nine Great Walks*.

Luckily it was no problem for us to book room at a camp site on Abel Tasman Coastal Track and we could therefore start out on a hike which ended up taking seven hours (25 km). As the name of the track indicates the route took us along the coast which meant a nice view over the beautiful azure water most of the time. At some points the route did bend away from the coast which changed the landscape to a dense rain forest, similar to something taken directly from Jurassic Park. We had to cross specific points at certain times in order to avoid the high tide. The water levels could change with up to six meters at some points so we had to get to the tidal crossings at a proper time before high tide.

Ready for seven hours of hiking.

Our first tidal crossing. The bridge may give an idea about how high the water can be at high tide.

A small example of our view most of the day – notice the many kayaks.

In general there are no dangerous animals in New Zealand. However, the country is infested with sandflies**. The camp ground in Abel Tasman was my first encounter with these beasts (but certainly not my last). Luckily I escaped with only a couple of bites on my feet – others in the group were not as lucky.

This is unfortunately the best photo I have (so far on the trip) to illustrate what sandflies are capable of. You can see a couple of bites on Skott’s feet although I must admit that it doesn’t seem like much at this picture. What the photo further shows is what happens when Søren gets a camera in his hands – lots of photos of random stuff.

We did not plan on walking all of Abel Tasman Coast Track’s 51 km – it is described like a 3-5 day’s walk. Instead we had planned to tramp for two days, 35 km in total. The reason we had to go 25 the first day and only 10 the second was another tidal crossing. From where we stayed the first night we had a two hour walk to a part which needed to be crossed before 9 am unless we wanted to wait until late afternoon before the crossing was accessible again. Therefore we got up early and started walking in order to get there in time. When we arrived at the critical point it was a bit anti climatic since there was no water nearby at all. However, half an hour later it would have been impossible to pass. Our fairly short walk on this second day was rewarded by a couple of hours relaxation on the beach before we were picked up by a water taxi which brought us back to Marahau. On this trip back we saw a few sea lions playing around in the sun.

Tidal crossing.

Sea lion enjoying the sun on a rock.

Afterwards we went back to Nelson where we stayed in a funny hostel called The Palace***. We spent the night here and continued south the next day (now we have gotten to Saturday of the first week in the story which spans almost four weeks in total). We went along the west coast, a very sparsely populated area of New Zealand which was easily seen on the amount of cars we met on the road. We stopped shortly in Punakaiki where we took a quick look at The Pancake Rocks (see below) before we continued to the “big city”**** of the west coast, Greymouth.

Skott shows what makes the Pancake Rocks so special – the taste! A lot of people mistakenly think it is due to their shape…

We spent a couple of days in Greymouth. After the first night, Borghild, kristian and I went horseback riding in Punakaiki while the other three went surfing. While the horseback riding was fine the surf trip was apparently more action packed. Not due to crazy waves or anything else like that but due to two visits to the hospital. At first Søren damaged a sinew (I think it is called) in one of his fingers while trying to correct his bathing shorts under his wetsuit. When he returned from the hospital (with some sort of splint on his finger which had to stay there for six weeks) he could pick up Skott who, after a couple of minutes of surfing, had managed to cut up his foot with his surfboard’s fins. Caroline was the only one who got to do a bit of surfing that day.

Kristian, Borghild og me on the horses which we were let around on by a Swedish and a German girl (random info once again).

The second day we went kayaking, once again in Punakaiki. It was more fun than I had expected, especially because the river was a bit more aggressive than I thought in the beginning.

The kayak rental place had some amazing 80-90’s cloth that we simply couldn’t resist putting on. In the confusion caused by my extreme enthusiasm I managed to throw away my watch which I miraculously managed to get back a couple of weeks later (now I at least have one loose thread to pick up on in a later post).

That’s it for this post (unless you haven’t read the footnotes yet and wish to do so. You should have done so as the references to them appeared in the text – maybe I should have mentioned that in the beginning but that is how I usually read footnotes so I didn’t think it would need an explanation). Notice how I have not spent four (fairly long) posts to almost get to the same point as Skott described in a single blog post about a month ago. But you have (among other things) seen a photo of a ninja in Wellington – Skott hasn’t been able to deliver anything like that on his blog!

For those who just can’t get enough are here the mentioned footnotes:
*About The Great Walks:
The Great Walks are routes through some of New Zealand’s most beautiful areas. As a lot of natural areas in New Zealand they are maintained by New Zealand Department of Conservation (DoC), who also runs the huts and camp grounds on the walks which often take 3-5 days to complete. If you are interested in a close encounter with New Zealand’s gorgeous nature these are the walks you should go on. Unfortunately they are so popular in the summer periods and the space in the huts and on the camp grounds so limited that you often need to book far in advance to be able to spend several days on the tracks. More than a month before our trip, Skott and I had talked about doing the Milford Track, which literally has gotten the nickname “The Finest Walk in the World”. All huts on the walk was booked far in advance, though, so it wasn’t possible for us to do that trip. Some may recall that I wrote about the Tongariro Alpine Crossing which I walked a while ago. That was actually my first encounter with one of The Great Walks since this one day trip is a subset of the four day Great Walk, Tongariro Northern Circuit.

**About sandflies:
Sandflies are small devils which made me miss the cute small Danish mosquitos which seem like the most lovable pets in comparison. Sandflies are the most annoying insects I have ever met: They attack in giant mobs, you can see and feel the after-effects of their bites for several weeks, more sandflies are attracted if you start scratching the bites and then they seem to especially enjoy Scandinavian blood for some reason. The Maori people believed that the sandflies were introduced in New Zealand by an angry god who was tired of looking at the lazy people stand around, enjoying the beautiful nature surrounding them. Sandflies behave in a peculiar way: If keep moving they won’t touch you but as soon as you stand still they attack you, 1000’s at a tie. They are therefore a very effective method to keep people moving.

***About hostels in New Zealand:
During our travels in New Zealand we did encounter a couple of peculiar hostels. A lot of them were “special” due to their shape, furniture, decoration and staff. The palace was for example a giant villa with enormous rooms and bath rooms which were shaped and decorated in typical Hundertwasser style (you do remember the famous public toilets, right?), changed into a hostel which was even fairly cheap to live in. Later on I might put up a post with photos from a couple of the hostels we visited during our travels.

****About calling Greymouth a “big city”:
“Big city” is here in quotes since an area with a population of about 14k wouldn’t be called that in many countries. Still, it is the sparsely populated west coast’s biggest city. In the middle of the 1800’s gold was found on NZ’s west coast which of course attracted a lot of people to the area. When the gold reserves had been emptied out most left again (a decision which was probably made easier by the awful weather – there is a reason the area is nicknamed “Wetland”). Greymouth is now one of the few proper cities left in the area. Less than 1% of NZ’s population lives on the West coast which covers an area of about 9% of the total area of New Zealand according to my Lonely Planet book. Don’t say that you do not learn anything from reading my blog!

When I in the beginning of July went to New Zealand it was after a very short summer vacation which only lasted about two weeks. Therefore it was a well deserved vacation that took it’s beginning Saturday November 14 after the last exam was over. And it was a summer vacation that was delayed by half a year even though it felt weird at a time where the cold and dark winter was beginning to slowly infest innocent little Denmark (the winter has fully arrived by now, I can assure you). In New Zealand, however, it was of course summer (as far as I’m informed that is still the case) which fitted me perfectly since the vacation was going to be spend on traveling around in beautiful New Zealand.

Monday, after the goodbye parties in the weekend and the packing of all my stuff, I was ready to go road tripping. Of course it was a bit weird to have to say goodbye to so many people I had met during the last five months in New Zealand. Especially because I know there are a lot of them I will never see again. However, I was prepared for that to happen even before I left for New Zealand. It took some time to pack the car; not surprising since we were five people who had to stuff almost all of our possessions from the last five months into a single car. At the same time it was stated that some of us would actually like it if all five people could fit in the car at the same time. The observant reader will at this point notice that the group consisted of six people with two cars (as mentioned in the former post). However, Caroline had already traveled south a couple of days before. We were supposed to meet her in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital from where we were supposed to go with the ferry the following day. To sum up: Five people, a lot of luggage, one car, illustrated through photos:

This photo is taken during the packing process. Not everything has been put into the car at this point.

Skott is playing a special kind of Tetris where the rows unfortunately don’t disappear when they are completed.

Additionally, we had to put two surfboards (Skott’s and Søren’s) on top of the car.

In the end, we somehow got everything to fit. After a final visit at Burger Fuel, a New Zealand burger franchise which serves burgers with fairly fresh ingredients, we could start the trip towards Wellington, approximately 650 km or 9 hours of driving. We arrived late in the evening/night in Wellington where we met Caroline who had reserved beds for us at an expensive hostel. Of course we didn’t get to do more that day.

We were supposed to head for the South Island with the ferry Tuesday evening. Before that we had time to go around and enjoy the capital of New Zealand. It was a very pleasant experience; the city seemed far nicer and welcoming than Auckland. It was probably due to the smaller streets, better city planning and nicer architecture. For some reason I started to think of Wellington as New Zealand’s pendant to San Francisco, maybe because of the sun, the hilly streets and the famous cable car which we rode to a botanical garden which unfortunately wasn’t that impressive.

You meet some interesting people in Wellington. Here: A ninja.

We also got to visit the parliament which is split up into several buildings. One of these buildings is named The Beehive due to it’s distinctive look. By going through some security checkpoints we got to get into the parliament to see the politicians discuss; rather boring but that was probably because I had no idea what they were discussing. Still, it was interesting to get to see where New Zealand is controlled from.

Søren presents: The Beehive.

Borghild presents: The central parliament building.

They had already begun to decorate for Christmas, a problem I will probably visit again later on: It seems very wrong to celebrate Christmas when the weather is so good and completely absurd to see decorated Christmas trees in bright sunshine.

For me, this is a photo of contrasts.

In the evening we got on the ferry heading to Picton. If we had been a bit smarter we would probably not have sailed with the ferry while it was dark since it is supposedly one of the most beautiful ferry rides in the world. Luckily we also needed to take the ferry back later on so we got to experience it in daylight as well.

I am not used to travel in this way, but we had left from Auckland without any big plans about what we were going to see and where we were heading. Of course we had a general idea of “must see” stuff but nothing specific. After having spend the night in Picton we found out that we wanted to do a small hike, and so we did. We went along the water to a lookout spot where it is possible to see the ferry go through Queen Charlotte Sound. This is the sound that makes the ferry ride so beautiful. The hike was a small one, approximately four hours – an appetiser for what we could expect the next day, but of course we didn’t know that at that point.

The view of the sound.

When we came back from the hike we met a man with a homemade boat. We had seen the boat the day before on the ferry where it was strapped on top of a car and had been wondering what it was. He also showed us his homemade surfboard – pretty impressive.

In the evening we went to Nelson where we had some wonderful Indian curry. In the end we headed to Marahau to camp.

This post ends with a photo of the nice tents we had available and me looking like a possum caught in the light from the headlamps of a car. I will probably mention possums again later on.

Caroline, Kristian og Søren had brought their very professional tents which could probably withstand the biggest snow storm. Especially Søren’s tent colored like something you would buy in a Danish toystore (Fætter BR) received a lot of nice comments.

Background info 2:
The next couple of posts I will probably name a couple of people several times. Instead of having to introduce these people randomly scattered around I will instead give a random introduction of them here. They are the five people I traveled with, a nice mix of Danes and Norwegians:

Skott (DK), 25: My study buddy from back home who has been mentioned several times at this blog already. Other people may know him by his first name, Jonas, but we soon realized that a lot of problems can come from having two Jonases from Denmark, studying the exact same thing, taking all the same courses, both living in Parnell just walking around pretending this is a normal thing. Unfortunate associations with e.g. The Jonas Brothers was put forward several times which I don’t think is a good thing, although I must admit that I have never heard their music as far as I know. Back in Denmark we are Skott and Ahmt; in New Zealand we were Skott and Jonas.

Søren (DK), 25: Also known as Shawn, Shaun, Sun, Son or whatever foreign people said when fighting with the weird Scandinavian vowel “ø” (no, it’s not the number zero). Søren was the very first person Skott and I met when we arrived in Auckland – he had arrived with the same plane as us and took the same shuttle to the city as we did. We have kept in touch ever since which proved to be a good idea since Søren is one of the most entertaining persons I can imagine spending time with. Studies sociology, has traveled a lot and is always ready with some absurd story from his own life.

Borghild (NO), 23: One of my flatmates from PSV. I met her in the beginning of the semester at a quiz night arranged by the university (part of the introduction week) where she told me that she had applied for student accommodation. The next day she moved into the same flat as I lived in. During the semester I have successfully introduced her to the great TV shows Firefly og The Big Bang Theory (“random introduction to people” means me stating random facts). Studies computer science.

Kristian (NO), 28: The oldest in the group. I met him through Borghild. Kind of like Skott and me they had arrived together from the same university and they also knew each other beforehand – no-one ever tried to call them The Jonas Brothers, though. He also lived in PSV, just as Skott, Borghild and I did. The only one from the group who stuck with Skott and me the whole way.

Caroline (NO), 21: The other car owner in the group. I also met Caroline in the beginning of the semester, the very first day of the introduction week where you ran into a lot of the new international students. As with all the others in the group, Caroline was one of the people I had kept in touch with since the beginning of the semester. Before she got to New Zealand she had been surfing in other parts of the world. Therefore she had (earlier in the semester) been tasked with teaching Skott, Søren and Kristian this noble art form. Studies electro engineering mixed with some business as far as I have been able to understand.

The group (later named The Jonas Family) from left to right: Søren, Borghild, mig, Skott, Kristian, Caroline.

That has got to be enough background information. Finally the story about our travels can begin – in the next post, that is.

I think I did mention that my exams had gone OK and my grades seem to confirm that. As far as I know (once again wonderful Wikipedia has been an immense help) you can pass a course with nine different grades (the letters A, B, and C with +/- variations) and fail it with either two or six different grades: D and E – I’m not sure whether or not they use +’s and -’s for the failing grades. It seems like a lot to have six different ways to fail but I must admit that I have never really thought much about the grades in that end of the scale.

I ended receiving three A’s and one A+. I got the A+ in my only undergraduate course which corresponds pretty well with the fact that I’m regarded as a post graduate student in New Zealand since I’m on my fifth year of my studies. I think I’m supposed to be pretty happy about those grades, especially since I don’t feel like the workload during the semester has been very large (no books to read for any of the courses and not that many assignments to hand in). Only in the last weeks of the semester did I have to focus intensely on the studies.

Now that I am writing about my studies I want to mention that my bachelor thesis which I wrote two fellow students (Johan Musaeus Brrun and Martin Lundberg-Jensen) in the (Danish) spring of 2008 has been awarded the best bachelor thesis in 2009 of the big consultancy company McKinsey & Company. We couldn’t participate in the 2008 competition since we didn’t defend the thesis until late August 2008 which meant the thesis was considered as finished in the school year 08/09. Only theses students themselves had chosen to submit to the competition were considered but I still think it is a pretty nice award to receive. Besides the honor we also received 15,000 DKK (about 4000 NZD) to split between us. Unfortunately it was only Martin who could be present at the award ceremony since both Johan and I was studying abroad (Johan in Sydney, Australia, and I in Auckland, New Zealand, as some of you may have noticed at this point).

I promise that this will be the last I write about my studies for a while (unless people protest and demand more about that particular subject). Next post will be about my travels in New Zealand (finally!).

There might be several reasons why you read this blog in English:
1. You might not have found out yet that you can change the language of the blog on the right hand side which would make me kind of sad since the function of those two flags should be pretty self-explanatory.
2. You might have found out that my English versions of my blog posts contain even more nonsense (such as this whole paragraph – you would have no idea it existed if you read the Danish version) and for some reason you tend to prefer that.
3. You prefer my English formulations.
4. You simply don’t understand Danish (which I feel is the least valid reason for reading my blog in English. Personally I have been able to understand and speak Danish since I was very young, so why shouldn’t you?).

Anyway, if you belong to the (very limited) group of people who read my blog in English due to Reason 4, you might not know what a julekalender (Christmas calendar) is. Which means I will have to explain it to you, even though Wikipedia does a pretty good job. It is a Scandinavian invention (apparently the Swedes were first with the idea in 1960, followed by the Danes in 1962). It is basically a TV show split into 24 episodes (kind of like 24 with Jack Bauer, just not as action packed, and usually with a bit more Christmas mood and more child friendly) aired from the 1st of December till the 24th where we celebrate Christmas in the evening here in Scandinavia. It is actually a pretty good tradition and it makes sense it is Scandinavian since we really don’t have anything else to do than to watch TV when we come to December – it is way too dark and cold to go outside.

Now you can add:
5. You get amazing lessons about Denmark/Scandinavia.
to the list of reasons to read my blog in English.

But now you know what a julekalender is, and you accept that it doesn’t have to be a TV show but can also be a written 24-part story, we can return to my blog post as I was translating it from Danish:
My blog can now be seen as a kind of julekalender, even though it won’t be in 24 parts, there is no guarantee that the finale will come on the 24th (which basically was my complete definition of a julekalender, but you must learn to live with it), there will be considerably less interested people following it and way less uncertainty about the final outcome than usual. Still, it is a story in multiple parts written and told during several days in December so it has a bit to do with a julekalender.

At the moment I am sitting at a hostel in New York and I am just about ready to return to Denmark. I am leaving tomorrow and I hope that my parents will be able to get through the climate chaos (not only due to the Climate Meeting ending and Obama having to leave the country from the airport but also since it apparently snowed in Denmark which I am not too fond of) so they can pick me up at the airport.

But I should stop here – if I don’t I will fuck up the chronology of my blog, and we can’t have a julekalender which starts with the end (no matter how anti climatic that end might be). Talking about anti climatic endings: At this point I was considering giving you some teaser for what you can expect in the upcoming blog posts but I won’t.